way to make us feel their presence, to
scare us."
McFaul was pleased to see that some
of his old friends---human-rights activ-
ists like Lev Ponomaryov---had re-
mained steadfast friends and true to
their principles, but many had sold
themselves out for money or Kremlin
favor. People he had first met in the
pro-democracy movement more than
twenty years ago were now feeding at the
trough of authoritarian power and the
various business conglomerates aligned
with it: they were Kremlin o cials and
advisers, oil and gas magnates, highly
obedient intellectuals. Sergei Markov,
one of his closest friends from the old
days, and a co-author with him of a book
called "The Troubled Birth of Russian
Democracy," was now a Putin loyalist.
Markov, who speaks decent English,
frequently goes on foreign television to
make the Kremlin's case. He has accused
Blackwater of assassinating innocent
Ukrainians at Maidan. He has said that
Russian doctors were devising a "special
medicine" to "cure" gays and lesbians and
move them toward "normal sexuality."
He is always on call to attack Obama.
I knew Markov, too, when McFaul
did, and I had a hard time believing that
he had become so reactionary, so shame-
less. I asked him about his outlandish
remarks about gays on television. Was
it true what he had said---that Russian
doctors were working on a "special"
gay-reversal medicine?
"I will speak frankly," he said. "Rus-
sian medicine is not working on this. But
I don't want to talk about gays---but
every time they ask about gays! I person-
ally believe homosexuality is part of a
human mind's nature. And I believe ho-
mosexuality is behind every human be-
ing's nature, one per cent, two per cent,
and it can develop under some circum-
stances. And I am very sorry, but I will
make a strong comparison---it's like sa-
dism. Sadism is in every human's psy-
chology. But it can develop only under
some circumstances. If someone be-
comes gay, it is also, I believe, bad for
him. . . . Someone can say, 'I am proud
that I am gay.' O.K., I can believe. But if
they say, 'I am happy I am gay,' I don't
trust that. It just isn't true."
Markov holds a variety of academic
and governmental advisory posts, and
when I paid him a visit at his o ce he al-
lowed that he was "a little bit" conspira-
torial in his thinking these days. He said
that "the international oligarchy---Soros,
the Rockefellers, the Morgans---all these
big, rich families and networks" were
backing an attempt to topple Putin.
"They want to take control of Russian
gas and oil resources." That there is such
a conspiracy afoot is also "clear to Putin."
Putin himself has not been reluctant
to express his sense of such hidden in-
trigues. When Secretary of State John
Kerry came to town for the first time, he
and McFaul went together to see Putin.
At one point, Putin stared at McFaul
across the table and said, "We know that
your Embassy is working with the oppo-
sition to undermine me."
"What do you mean?" Kerry said.
"We know this," Putin said.
"Putin didn't want to go into details,"
McFaul continued. "He stared right at
me. . . . That kind of threatening, we-
will-prevail look."
On February 4th, McFaul announced
that he would step down as Am-
bassador following the Sochi Olympics.
Angered by the anti-gay-propaganda
laws, the Obama Administration had
scaled back its delegation to the event.
They sent no top o cials and made sure
that the most prominent figures were
gay athletes. When I had breakfast with
McFaul in Sochi, he made it clear that he
was keeping a low profile and leaving
after just a few days. His family was wait-
ing for him in Palo Alto. For such an
easygoing guy, McFaul can show surpris-
ing flashes of temper and irritation. In
Sochi, he just seemed sombre. He had
lasted two years in Moscow, hardly a
truncated term, and he had poured his
heart into the job, but his ambassador-
ship had not been a success. It couldn't
have been, not when, in McFaul's words,
the U.S.-Russia relationship was "at its
lowest point since the post-Soviet period
began, in 1991."
In March, after Putin annexed Cri-
mea, McFaul wrote what he saw as his
"Kennan" manifesto for the Times'
Op-Ed page. He endorsed the Admin-
istration's policy---sanctions, isolation,
expulsion from international organiza-
tions like the G-8---but he also admitted
that the U.S. "does not have the same
moral authority as it did in the last cen-
tury."He recalled that when he was Am-
bassador and challenged his Russian in-
terlocutors on issues of international law
and a commitment to sovereignty, he
was met with "What about Iraq?" And,
in a subtle jab at Obama, he wrote, "We
are enduring a drift of disengagement in
world a airs. After two wars, this was in-
evitable, but we cannot swing too far. As
we pull back, Russia is pushing forward."
A few months after our meeting in
Sochi, I went to see McFaul in Palo Alto.
"Come out, honey. I found the sunscreen."